How many views do you need to get monetized on Instagram?
15,000 post engagements (number of people who have engaged with your posts through likes, comments, shares, and more.) in the last 60 days. 180,000 minutes viewed in the last 60 days. 30,000 1-minute views for 3-minute videos in the last 60 days.
You’ve got the perfect shots, edits, and captions. And your brand is giving off just the right vibes.
Better still, your use of Instagram’s features, like Instagram Reels and IG Live are on point. Your followers are engaged, and your IG feed is on fire.
You’re finally getting the reach and growth you worked so hard for!
Now what?
Well, all this time invested should pay off (literally). You’re ready to take your Instagram marketing to the next level by monetizing your following.
And we’ve got your back.
Let’s get into it!
(Skip, I know I’m ready)
Partner with brands for a sponsored post through the Brands Collabs Manager.
Get recurring revenue from Subscriptions, a new feature where viewers pay a monthly recurring fee to access exclusive content.
Note each monetization feature has different criteria you’ll have to meet depending on your location, number of followers, and your engagement rate. You’ll have to check your specific account to see if you are already qualified to use them.
For most creators, you need:
To be at least 18 years old.
Be in locations where the features are available (US, UK, Japan, Spain, Italy, and more)
Between 1000 to 10,000 followers depending on the feature.
If you have less than 10,000 followers, there is still hope. There are plenty of ways to monetize your influence on Instagram.
With Subscriptions, you are able to:
Offer exclusive, premium content to your subscribers that they can’t get anywhere else.
Choose the price you want to charge for your Subscription (monthly or yearly).
For example, Chanel Kreuzer, an American artist and Instagram influencer who has 24,000 followers, charges $1.99 to access behind-the-scenes videos and art tips.
If she has 200 subscribers, she’ll earn $398 per month directly from her Instagram account. Creators currently keep 100% of the revenue, excluding taxes. But we all know that this is going to change in the future.
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Take BFUNK for example; an L.A.-based dance company that teaches a fusion of South Asian and western jazz-funk styles. To monetize their social following on Instagram, they launched an online choreography membership site to offer dance tutorials and choreographed dances in video form.
BFUNK’s IG videos act as a preview to their full paid choreography tutorials. They use Instagram to get people hooked on their content and keep them wanting more! It creates interest in and referrals back to their independent video streaming site hosted on Uscreen.
Our research shows that with adequate marketing, 2% – 5% of Instagram followers convert to paying subscribers to video streaming services. On average, Uscreen customers earn over 6 figures a month.
Instagram influencers’ ultimate goal is to work with their dream brands and earn big bucks. That’s why the first on this list is to offer sponsored content.
Also known as influencer marketing, this option allows you to collaborate with brands to create sponsored content to promote a product, service, or campaign. Influencer marketing posts typically focus on direct product placement through tutorials, giveaways, and unboxings.
You can see how she seamlessly worked the product placement into a valuable piece of content. It’s more than just her holding a pot of yogurt and posing, it’s something that her audience can go away and use.
Instagram requires creators and influencers to disclose when they’re posting sponsored content. It’s best practice to mention when your posts are sponsored ads.
You can do this by using the sponsored ad tag, mentioning it’s an ad in the caption, saying it’s a gift from, or a partnership with, a brand, or adding #sponsored #ad hashtags.
$10 – $100 for 1000 to 10,000 followers.
$250 – $750 per 1000 engagements (or $0.25 – $0.75 per post engagement).
Finding the Right Sponsors
Wondering how to find these brands?
To be eligible for the Brand Collabs Manager tool, you need to have 1000 followers and at least one of these criteria:
15,000 post engagements (number of people who have engaged with your posts through likes, comments, shares, and more.) in the last 60 days.
180,000 minutes viewed in the last 60 days.
30,000 1-minute views for 3-minute videos in the last 60 days.
After you’ve checked that you qualify for Brands Collabs Manager, you can follow the steps in the video below to use paid partnerships in your social media feed and stories!
Another option is to research and identify your favorite brands and consider whether your audience will also obsess over these products. Then, engage with their profiles by leaving comments, liking their posts, and demonstrating your value as the superfan you are.
When you’ve started to see some interaction from them, you can slide into their DMs to see if they’re interested in working together.
You can also register with an agency, like IMA or Audiencly, to help you connect wIth brands.
Follower Count & Engagement Rate: What You Need To Know
According to the Influencer Marketing Hub, there are 5 types of influencers:
Type of influencer # of followers Average payment per post Nano 1k – 10k $10 – $100 Micro 10k – 50k $100 – $500 Mid-tier 50k – 500k $500 – $5k Macro 500k – 1M $5k – $10k Mega 1M+ $10k+
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Research shows that the average engagement rate seen on influencers’ profiles is 1% to 3.5%, you can start monetizing your audience once you reach that level of engagement. The higher the engagement rate the more your Instagram feed will be worth.
If your engagement rate is below 1%, you should work more on building your brand and getting traction with your audience.
Alternatively, if your engagement rate is 3.5%, your followers are highly engaged, and you can expect a bigger return from any monetizing strategy you choose to implement.
With that said, micro-influencers can make a decent amount of money, especially if their engagement rate is high.
Sounds intriguing, right? Here’s what you need to do to calculate your engagement rate:First, find the engagement rate per post for a specific time frame (the last 30 or 60 days):
Engagement rate per post = (Total number of likes & comments in 30 days / Number of posts in 30 days)
Then use the above number to calculate the total engagement rate in percentages:
Engagement rate = (Engagement rate per post / Number of followers) x 100
And that’s it!
We recommend you hit the 10,000 follower mark and an engagement rate of 2.5% or more before looking to monetize.
That’s because you can:
Sell to a larger number of people (if you have 2.5% engagement, you’ll reach 250 Instagram users).
Use in-app functionality like sharing links in your stories which is unavailable below the 10,000 follower mark.
Survey your follower base to get a clear idea of products/services they want to see.
Offer a larger return on investment to brands and advertisers.
Once you have your engagement numbers, you can start adding video product placements to your sponsorship packages.
3. Get Smart with Video Product Placements
Product placements or video ads are as ageless as advertising, but the technique truly came into vogue with the rise of video.
Here’s how it works: a brand will pay you to feature their product in your video, and you’ll generate some cash for advertising it.
Also known as “embedded marketing,” product placements are often so subtle that they completely fly under the radar, like Audi in Marvel movies. Some may be more blatant, like Heineken in James Bond.
Reels: product placements with Reels can be anything from styling and make-up tutorials to snack reviews.
product placements with Reels can be anything from styling and make-up tutorials to snack reviews. Stories : showcase products in super-short, unedited videos from your daily life.
: showcase products in super-short, unedited videos from your daily life. Long-form video : use IGTV for longer tutorials or reviews.
: use IGTV for longer tutorials or reviews. Instagram Live: produce live videos if you want to get real-time engagements and questions.
If you want your product placement videos to generate a second income stream, you can enable Instagram’s new monetization feature, IGTV Ads. This lets you get another payout on your IGTV videos from ad revenues. (Which is likely to be 55% of ad revenue!)
You can also use Instagram’s Live Badges feature on IG Live to generate extra revenue from your Live product placement videos. Badges are a way for your followers to tip you while live streaming by ‘buying a badge.’
If you’re wondering how to get started with product placements, your best bet is to approach brands directly with your pitch and prepare your proposal in detail.
Soraya Shawky is a beauty and wellness influencer, with great style. Her product placement videos are on-brand. She shows products she would personally use, like make-up, body oils, and clothes.
Placements are measured by their CPM (cost per 1,000 views). Depending on your clout, what you’re spotlighting and to whom, there’s a wide range for potential earnings.
Just remember the more views you generate, the greater the profit.
4. Sell Affiliate Products
It’s also one of the easiest ways to get started because most products you’re already using have affiliate programs.
This involves working with a brand or business as an “ambassador” to promote their products or services in exchange for a portion of revenue.
Here’s how it works:
Sign up as an affiliate. Use the provided unique URL link or code in your post(s). You receive a percentage of every purchase made.
Affiliate marketing is an ideal place to begin monetizing your Instagram. The barrier to entry is low and thousands of top brands already have a self-enrollment program in place. It only takes a few minutes to sign up and get started!
You’ve probably already seen affiliate marketing in action while scrolling through your feed.Take this update from Luna the Husky for example. She’s a pet influencer boasting over 90K followers! Her feed promotes her favorite all-natural kibble, Akela:
When someone buys the food, Luna and her humans get a commission.
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Getting started as an affiliate is a fairly straightforward process. Just search: [product name] + “become an affiliate”
And you’ll be able to see if they have one or not. Then, simply fill in the necessary details to sign up.
Pro-tip: some programs may be hidden in website footer links.
You can also consider an affiliate marketplace to get started. It’s a network that connects affiliates with merchants, such as Amazon Affiliate or ClickBank.
It’s best to stick to goods and services that fit your niche and that you personally believe in, these will resonate most with your target audiences and have the largest impact.
You can expect to earn a commission percentage ranging from 5% to 50%. This depends on the industry or type of product you’re promoting, the product’s price, and your affiliate partner’s profit margin.
5. Sell Your Own Products
Creating digital and physical products on your IG page can go a long way in amplifying your brand. Your products can either be part of your content or the content itself.
This can be anything from physical goods like clothes, accessories, or home decor to digital products like e-books, online courses, or presets.
The best part is that you get complete control over what you sell, how much you charge, and the design of your product.
But which products should you sell? Take a look at the people in your audience — what they use, wear, consume or interact with daily.
Here are a few examples based on hot-selling items in any niche:
Stickers and Magnets
Totes and Drawstring Backpacks
Mugs, Glasses, and Tumblers
T-shirts and Hoodies
Pens
Flash Drives
Phone covers
Illustrations
Calendars
Sports equipment (i.e. resistance bands)
You can create anything if they relate to your niche and galvanize your audience.
Dropshipping to the Rescue
But creating goods as your main source of content is a lot of work because you’ll deal with the logistics of creating your product/service.
This is where you can enlist a manufacturer and set up a dropshipping store.
Essentially, it’s a setup where a business arranges for the manufacturer to ship directly to the customer. You completely bypass production, inventory storage, and shipping hassles. Just use a dropshipping app like Oberlo in the Shopify store to coordinate the process.
Nevertheless, this venture can be worth the return because you can:
Create a strong brand image.
Receive commissioned jobs where you get paid for your service/products.
Generate revenue from selling your products online.
Increase collaborations with other brands.
The amount of money you make from selling merch depends on the size of your audience and the price of your merch.
For example, if you have 10,000 followers and 5% of them buy a $10 t-shirt, that’s $5000. You can expect to earn $10 per 1,000 followers, or $0.25 to $0.75 per post engagement.
If you’d like to monetize your knowledge instead of a physical product, then the next option is perfect for you!
6. Teach What You Know
That’s where information products come in; they educate or help your audience solve a specific pain point they’re experiencing in their lives. That could include anything from learning how to do magic tricks to self-discovery through astrology and everything in between.
Info products can be e-books, one-off payment programs, audio, or video courses.
Take a look at Naturally.Sassy’s feed, which shows major fitness, health, wellness, and dog inspo. She shares, health and wellness tips along with short snippets of her ballet-inspired fitness and wellness tutorials:
These videos give Sassy’s attentive IG followers tips on how to lead a healthy lifestyle with movement, breathwork, and food. She positions herself as an expert who practices what she preaches with high-quality content.
Information products are low-cost products that can be sold at high prices. You can then sell your info product as a subscription service or one-off payment for a range of prices from $9.99 all the way up to $1,000+!
Built-in monetization is an immediate, short-term solution to monetization. The algorithm is almost always in control and is in constant change. And when it changes, creators usually take a hit.
If you want to make a few extra bucks from your social media, these built-in monetizations are nice to have.
But if you want to turn this into a media empire, you’ll have to look at building your own independent video membership site.
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Having your own independent video membership site is a long-term strategy for growing your personal brand and online business.
Wrapping this up…
The best strategy to monetize your Instagram account is to leverage the built-in monetization features that you’re qualified for while taking your most loyal fans to an independent video membership site that you own. This way, you’re in complete control of the content, the price, the features, and your success.
Social Media Means
Photo: Evie Shaffer
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